Elizabeth Kolbert traveled from Alaska to Greenland, and visited top scientists, to get to the heart of the debate over global warming. The result is The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, a book about mass extinctions that weaves intellectual and natural history with reporting in the field began as an article in The New Yorker. It was a New York Times 2014 Top Ten Best Book of the Year and is number one on the Guardian's list of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of all time. The Sixth Extinction also won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in the General Nonfiction category, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle awards for the best books of 2014. In 2019 it was the chosen book for the Chicago Public Library's One Book, One Chicago program, and was named one of Slate’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years. Her new book is H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z (Ten Speed Press, March 26, 2024) which grew out of essays she wrote for the New Yorker. Kirkus calls it "An intelligently provocative and well-presented look at the world’s most pressing issue."
She has received numerous awards and honors including the National Academy of Sciences Communication Award in the newspaper/magazine category, a Lannan Writing Fellowship, the Heinz Award, a National Magazine Award in the Reviews and Criticism category, the Sierra Club's David R. Brower Award, the Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism from the American Geophysical Union, the Desmond Wettern Award for Best Journalism, the Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize at Dickinson College for Global Environmental Activism, the Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square. She was the 12th Janet Weis Fellow in Contemporary Letters at Bucknell University and was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024 she was named a Library Lion by the New York Public Library.
Robin Kelsey joined the Harvard faculty in 2001 and has been Shirley Carter Burden Professor since 2009. From 2016 to 2024, he served as Dean of Arts & Humanities, and prior to that he served as Chair of the Department of History of Art & Architecture. He has served as President of the Harvard College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and in 2018 was selected to represent the faculty of the University at the installation of Lawrence Bacow as Harvard’s 29th President. He currently serves as Co-Chair of the Harvard University Committee on the Arts. He holds a PhD from Harvard and a JD from Yale Law School and has practiced law in California.
This event is co-sponsored by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.
The Environment Forum is dedicated to exploring new work in the arts and humanities that reframes or reimagines the relationship of humanity to the rest of nature.
LOCATION:Sever Hall, Room 113 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20250213T230000Z DTEND:20250214T003000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR